Friday, May 17, 2013

Best of the Week #104


Today is my last day at work! I’m wrapping things up, writing an epic exit memo of instructions for the new me, cleaning the crumbs out of my desk drawers (in Mollie Land, office drawers are strictly for snack storage), and sending that final all-staff goodbye email. It’s been almost two years at Enough (go ahead, you know the end of that pun) and the Satellite Sentinel Project, and though I’m definitely ready to move on to my new and exciting things, I’ll miss my awesome co-workers!

I considered doing a Best of the Week strictly of goodbye gifs…but maybe we’ll save that for when I actually leave leave.


I started out just skimming this (as I do with most things on the interwebs), but it is fascinating and I definitely re-focused and read it all: "For Sale: A Video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Smoking Crack Cocaine."
  • It began like this: We've made fun of Ford before for his bizarre pronouncements and nude pictures. Last week, we got a tip from someone claiming to have a videotape of Ford smoking crack. Would we like to buy it?
  • And so here we are. The owner still hasn't found a buyer with pockets deep enough to meet his demands. But word is out around Toronto now that the tape exist, and Ford's circle knows about it courtesy a CNN reporter. So, with permission, I am laying out everything I know about the Rob Ford Crack Tape in the hopes that a) everyone knows that Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, smokes crack, and b) this knowledge might hasten the arrival of the Rob Ford Crack Tape on the internet or broadcast television, because really, it is something to behold.
This dog. “Maddy On Things.”

Party Nose

I disagree with a lot of this, but parts are interesting: “The 5 Reasons Girls Type Like Thissss.” Or, correction, I don’t disagree with the fact that people do these things, I just don’t do most of them. I purposefully misspell in writing when I want it to reflect how I say things out loud – i.e. all caps to yell, “Baleful Os (nooo),”  and “celebratory vowels (yayyyyy).”

Again, I don’t exactly agree with all of this author’s conclusions, “Women Are Natural-Born Stalkers, and That Can Be a Good Thing.” Buuuut this sentence = me, 100%: And so women just want to know WHAT THE F*** IS UP, like all the time and with everyone.
  • Not to be all gender essentialist about it, but there's something about borderline-obsessive curiosity that is more in line with the personality traits of women. Maybe it's a result of being raised in a world with implicit biases regarding our behavior as females. Generally considered as physically weaker, it only makes sense that we would develop our strength through social acumen and find power in trading information.
This is also me sometimes. Hungry corgi!


Witty and hilarious: “I Tried Gwyneth Paltrow’s Diet.”
  • At $154.31, it is almost triple what I usually pay for food, and I haven’t even bought all the fish I will eventually buy! (The diet is really heavy on fish.) I bought at least ten dollars worth of kale and an eleven-dollar jar of honey. Do you know what raw honey is?  It is eleven dollars! And there are so many more ingredients than just those two. I actually had a mild panic attack while buying the food and I wasn't even having a dinner party.
  • After breakfast I decided to do the first DVD of the Tracy Anderson method. It's difficult, actually. Essentially you hold tiny weights in your hand and then flap your arms wildly like a person in a Victorian insane asylum having an epileptic fit. You do this for an hour. At the end, I was so tired I lay on the floor.
Like:


Similarly, from the show Scandal, which I don't watch but my friends do: Kerry Washington's handsome Senator boyfriend in reference to a woman he dated awhile back: "She didn't read. As if that's a thing. Not reading. Can you believe that?"
Mean Girls Meets The Great Gatsby.” I still haven’t seen Gatsby…fail.


Someday I will have nice things."10 Pretty Domed Cake Stands and Keepers."

Go NY Magazine…I should read it more often? “My Sloppy, Sad Adventure in ‘Pajama Dressing.’”

  • New clothing is so hard to buy: You have to go to a store and try it on and then come to some sort of Socratic conclusion about it. Pajamas are less judgmental.
  • So when Marc Jacobs paraded pajamas down the runway at Louis Vuitton and Rihanna and Sofia Coppola showed up at parties in pajamas like tiny Julian Schnabels, I was elated. If pajamas were fair game to wear to actual events in the day, my wardrobe actually became much larger and significantly more cutting-edge (I usually hew to the more classic side of the spectrum, not so-called “runway trends.” These designer pajamas were so cool, like better-cut, ultrafeminine suits that a very short person could wear. One problem: I had not seen any people that were not Rihanna actually wear pajamas out of the house. Am I Rihanna? I cannot wear a sweatshirt that well! Am I Sofia Coppola? Not at all! My eyebrows are terrible…But you never know who you are until you try.
'Space Oddity' In Space: Yes, Astronauts Are Still The Coolest Humans

  • Yes, you will never do anything this cool. You could miniaturize Jay-Z and put him inside your iPod, inherit sixteen billion dollars, bring James Dean back to life, time-travel to 1968 to hip-nap Joan Holloway's hips, give birth to Miles Davis, and hire Stephen Hawking to help you develop the capability to spontaneously turn into a Corvette anytime you wanted, and you would not be this cool. Nothing is this cool.
Sister2, this one is for you! "Chubby Chipmunk Cheeks."


Watch this interesting video – “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.”


  • The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table: Pay people enough so that they’re not thinking about money and they’re thinking about the work. Once you do that, it turns out there are three factors that the science shows lead to better performance, not to mention personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Need an epic soundtrack for your life? THIS. I think that want that song to be playing as I get on my airplane to Nepal. And/or on repeat for the next week?

Can we talk about how excited I am about all the food on my travels!?! As LLC advises, eat all the things. "Laotian food in Honolulu at S&T Thai Cuisine."
  • Laotian food, a friend says, is like "dirty Thai."
  • - sup new mai (above left): a bamboo shoot salad, seasoned with bai yanang, what Bletter calls an "MSG plant" for its natural MSG content, released by massaging the plant in water. The crunch of thinly sliced bamboo and deep savory flavor of this dish makes it one of my favorites.
  • - tam makhung (above right): a familiar green papaya salad, but in this dish, you can really taste the difference between Thai and Laotian food. The fish sauce for this dish is much more pungent and funkier than in the Thai version.
Me at 5pm today:


Let's celebrate everything! Have a great weekend!!!